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in field or at fair———here a man on whom, ten years before, he had shut his eyes in advanced but vigorous life, now sitting, with a white head and supported on a staff———all this change he knew before, but now he saw it; and there was thus a somewhat sad but an interesting, delightful, and impressive contrast and resemblance between the past and the present, brought immediately before him by the removal of a veil. Every face around him———every figure———was instructive as well as pleasant; and humble as his sphere of life was, and limited its range, quite enough of chance and change was now submitted to his meditation, to give his character, which had long been thoughtful, a still more solemn cast, and a temper of still more homely and humble wisdom.
Nor did all the addition to his happiness come from human life. Once more he saw the heavens and the earth. By men in his lowly condition, nature is not looked on very often perhaps with poetical cyes. But all the objects of nature are in themselves necessarily agreeable and delightful: and the very colours and forms he now saw filled his soul with bliss. Not for ten dark years had he seen a cloud, and now they were piled up like castles in the summer heaven. Not for ten dark years had he seen the vaulted sky, and there it was now bending majestically in its dark, deep, serene azure, full of tenderness, beauty, and power. The
